A lot went right when things went wrong at Ric's

The very strange fire at Ricís Food Center early Thursday morning showed that being prepared can help when the unexpected happens.

The official circumstances of the fire havenít been fully released, but fire broke out in a snack-food display during the wee hours. Thereís probably not a section in the store managerís manual about what to do if bags of munchie food burst into flame at 3:38 a.m.

What happened next, though, gives us a lot of confidence.

Store personnel had a fire extinguisher handy. The flames set off the storeís fire sprinkler system, as well.

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Itís easy to discount the importance of fire extinguisher. Businesses must have them, but many homes could use them, but donít have them.

The sprinkler system seems to have done a good job of dousing the fire, as well. Sprinkler systems donít come cheap; over the years, weíve heard grumbling from business types who would rather not spend the money on something they hope theyíll never use.

Certainly, the owners of Ricís hoped theyíd never use their sprinkler system. The zoned system gave a good soaking to the part of the store where the fire was, and left the rest unscathed. It made a mess, but it could have been a much bigger, more disastrous mess.

Firefighters were on the scene quickly. It helps that the fire station is right across High Street from the store, but people in Mt. Pleasant and Union Township can count on quick responses from the Mt. Pleasant Fire Department.

Something else was done right: the security cameras. Two customers came into the store right before the incident happened, and police wanted to talk to them.

While the images that came off Ricís security cameras werenít the best quality by any means, they certainly were better and easier to access than images weíve seen from many other security cameras. Police were able to pull still images within a few hours. Those images were distributed quickly to the news media.

In a short period of time, pictures of those customers were online and on television. The images were shared and shared again on Facebook, and it didnít take long before these young men were having a heart-to-heart talk with a police officer. Charges are pending.

And the work of the cleanup crews from Hammer Restoration Inc. was phenomenal. In 12 hours, the store was open again, despite smoke and water damage.

The private sector, the public sector and the community as a whole all worked together to deal with something unexpected. No one was hurt. Damage was controlled. Good preparedness worked, and thatís a lesson that can be applied in so many other areas.